Eight Rivers of Shadow, while an improvement on Leo Hunt’s first book in the series Thirteen Days of Midnight, still proved itself to be an overwhelmingly shallow novel with little characterisation or originality.Most of the novel felt like a rehash of Thirteen Daysmixed with some Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Orpheus and the Underworld with our protagonist, Luke Manchett, growing as a character on a scale of ‘very little’ to ‘none at all’.

After the events of Thirteen Days, Leo Hunt was in the perfect position to develop Luke Manchett’s character in a way that would help him discover his power in a world where magic and Necromancy exist. Instead, Luke bumbles his way through his new found powers relying on everyone around him who appears to be more capable than him on almost every single level. The idea of Necromancy is such a great premise and one that’s been pretty under-utilised in genre fiction that this could have made the book about a thousand times more interesting! Luke has these powers, but what do they mean, how do they develop, how can he harness them for good, evil, anything? These questions weren’t asked in the first book, and while Eight Rivers does raise some interesting moral questions, they are outside of the bounds of Luke’s newfound skills.

My main issue with Eight Rivers of Shadow is that we are given characters that we already know from the first book in the series, and yet they are simply not developed any further.The lives of Hunt’s characters remain largely static and most of the plot’s development seems to rely wholly on Luke being completely inept and slightly stupid.This issue is exemplified once more in one of the biggest criticisms I had about Thirteen Days and that is the complete lack of adult supervision in these novels.Parents are either just rubbish at parenting or completely absent during the whole series creating a world where it essentially feels there are no adults around.While this can be an interesting plot device as we’ve seen in books like Michael Grant’s Gone series, it is painfully clear that Leo Hunt has not put this in to his narrative intentionally.Instead he’s tried so hard to create a realistic teenaged boy who his readers can relate to, but instead created a limbo world that neither adults nor young adults will feel any kinship.

From a pacing perspective the bland and lifeless characters make it pretty difficult to invest in the plot in any kind of meaningful way.This book should have been an easy read, but I felt myself so poorly invested in its narrative that three weeks later and I’d barely grazed 75%.It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy myself when I was reading it in at least a superficial way, I just didn’t feel motivated to make the time to pick it up.

Ultimately I think Eight Rivers of Shadow didn’t differentiate itself in plot and scope enough from the first book in the series.It felt pretty same, only without developing anything.As far as YA literature goes there are numerous better books out there.This one wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good enough for me to want to recommend it to anybody.Reading it was an entirely ambivalent experience, as is its memory.

Thirteen Days of Midnight should have been right up my alley. It should have excited me. It should have spooked me. It should have done a lot of things. But it didn’t. Not any of them.

Thirteen Days of Midnight is a novel rife with possibility. It has a brilliant draw that makes it sound like an amazing blend of Caspar the Friendly Ghost and The Woman in Black. Pacts with the devil, necromancy, hauntings and inheritance. What ‘s not to like? The real issue with this book is that it just didn’t go anywhere, or do anything. I can see what Leo Hunt was trying to achieve, but he just didn’t quite get there. Everything happens too quickly meaning that the plot lacked depth. And the motivations for anyone doing anything were virtually non-existent.

Hunt’s characters lack personality and motivation. They also don’t react to things in a healthy or normal fashion. While I realise that Luke Manchett, the protagonist, is estranged from his father it would still be natural for him to feel some upset at his death. I know many people estranged from their families who still grieve when one of them dies. It is normal and natural, it is normal to regret and be saddened for a relationship that will never again have the chance to be. But Luke goes to school, laughs with his friends, doesn’t tell him mother that her husband is dead, goes to see a lawyer alone about his fathers’ estate (this alone was completely ridiculous…). The characters’ behaviours were simply implausible. Not to mention that the whole novel felt like a manifesto on bad parenting.

The plot itself seems like it should be exciting but simply wasn’t. Luke inherits money that we never see. He has friends who we barely meet. There is a love triangle that never happens. Some ghosts that never haunt. Luke is never afraid of the ghosts. There is no period of coming to terms with anything. A female character is introduced as the outsider and within a scene she and Luke are best buddies. The Book of Eight, a necromantic tome is helpful in a three day dream sequence we don’t get to read about. Luke becomes a necromancer and never does any actual necromancy except some casual animal cruelty. All back story is given in monologue rather than organically through the text and none of the characters have any personality. And this doesn’t even begin to take in to account the unexplored moral implications of soul slavery and the obvious physical manifestations of violent death and physical abuse that show themselves on the ghostly bodies of Luke’s host. All these elements could have been something, but instead were a collection of scenes that did nothing and somehow led to a resolution with an implausible non-choice. I just wanted each of these elements to be so much more…in fact to be anything!

Thirteen Days of Midnight has the beginnings of a great book. I would have said that this is the first draft of an exciting novel. It’s such a shame it made it to publication in the state that it’s currently in, because I do not doubt that it will not fail to disappoint. What a let down.